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[Atarlost]

A related issue is that dwarves spend an awful lot of time filling needs.  Some of that may be dwarves caught in need fulfillment bugs, but it feels seems like about half of my dwarves not on active military duty are in the temple, tavern, or library at any time.  Add dwarves sleeping who are harder to count and that's way too little labor per dwarf for a fort at an FPS friendly scale to work smoothly.  I've had to run fastdwarf from time to time to get enemy equipment cleaned up that my dwarves haven't otherwise been able to haul between sieges and that's using autodump to deal with the actual bodies. 

[PatrikLundell]

A related issue is that dwarves spend an awful lot of time filling needs.  Some of that may be dwarves caught in need fulfillment bugs, but it feels seems like about half of my dwarves not on active military duty are in the temple, tavern, or library at any time.  Add dwarves sleeping who are harder to count and that's way too little labor per dwarf for a fort at an FPS friendly scale to work smoothly.  I've had to run fastdwarf from time to time to get enemy equipment cleaned up that my dwarves haven't otherwise been able to haul between sieges and that's using autodump to deal with the actual bodies. 

Whether this is a balance issue or not depends on how much leave you give them. If you were to give them only a month per year, yes, I'd expect them to spend it on catching up. If you run a 50% duty, 50% leave schedule (with no barracks allocated when off duty), that's an issue.

[Immortal-D]

Long time player here, just throwing in my 2 coppers.  I wish to reiterate the importance of playing a Fortress for an extended time (10+ ingame years).  Build a Fort and some projects outside, in a calm forest with rain.  You can have all the nice luxuries you want, a few instances of being rained on will make your Dorfs crazy in no time flat.  Add a single siege cleanup for good measure.

[scourge728]

even better, go to war with or don't embark near the elves, so you can't get all the booze ever

[Nessus]

I'm another long time player who registered to chime in here.

Fortunately most people said what I did already, so I will +1 for "make meals/drinks fulfill that needs," "dwarves should be more able to do things like socialize and what not," and "make getting rained on/hauling goblin chunks less psychologically devastating."

In terms of general overview I figure the ideal balance is that if you are playing decently and only dealing with occasional disasters, the stress and entropy will either build up very slowly or remain about neutral. Bad play, or bad luck, or hubris, should lead to the death spirals, not routine matters.

[Khalvin]

Long Term player,

My observation is that my dwarfs are not able to experience enough positive thoughts to make up for even the mundane negative thoughts. Once a dwarf is going sour, the effort to redeem them threatens the sanity of rest of the fort, meaning a slightly grumpy dwarf is enough of a liability they should be disposed of. Tantrums are just that debilitating.

I dig my forts into the side of a cliff with a waterfall to make use of the free mist generation. I would typically depend on Fisherdwarves and build my animal pens and butcher/tanner above ground.
The Rain thoughts send my dwarves insane over the course of a few seasons. These unhappy dwarves are the first to spiral into tantrums if I haven't had a siege or were-beast attack.
This is with a Legendary Dinning Hall, Mist generating waterfall on the way to that dinning hall and large bedrooms and clothing for every dwarf.
Once a dwarf has been killed, my fort is essentially over. The reaction of seeing a fellow citizen die of their dead corpse being hauled to the Corpse Stockpile hidden behind a wall is enough to send one or more dwarves into tantrums and at this point five to ten dwarves are beating each other up.
Locking them up for their crime didn't prevent the victim from experiencing the attack.

Honestly I think the minor stresses are having too much an impact into the system. Dwarves should quickly get used to dealing with minor frustrations like rain and cold. Much like they used to.
Unfortunately none of this stress is offset by any amount of consistent good thoughts.
Dwarves have no care about the quality of their food, If they are working they only become upset they aren't socializing or worshiping or fighting or reading. If they are reading they only get upset they are not socializing or worshiping or fighting or working.
If they have family outside the fort they miss them, but I have no way of inviting that family to come to the fort or even visit.

Museums and Sculpture Gardens, tombs and Memorial Halls are just not doing anything themselves to effectively meet any needs. The are largely ornamental.
Zach, try playing longer than three years in a embark that is relatively boring and see if you can get any dwarves to stay above negative stress. Sure, the dwarves may maintain a steady level of low stress that withers away into depression, but why aren't they becoming happier?
Perhaps there is a disconnect between how you and Tarn expect the game to work and how we as players are thinking it should work. We expect dwarves to eventually become moderately happy if their needs are met, not just above tipping into insanity.

This is how I expected the system to function in a void of having any extreme trauma or happy surprises.

• Ecstatic: Dwarf has all their physical needs met (Food, Alcohol, Cloths, and a bed) over a reasonable stretch of time with several high quality things like an exceptional lavish meal and their own spacious bedroom, they work their preferred job plus they can pray in a temple to a deity they directly worship.
• Very Happy: Dwarf has all their physical needs met (Food, Alcohol, Cloths, and a bed) over a reasonable stretch of time plus their preferred job and a place to either pray or think.
• Happy: Dwarf has all their physical needs met (Food, Alcohol, Cloths, and a bed) over a reasonable stretch of time plus any job of any kind whether they prefer it or not, there isn't a temple to pray at.
• Okay: Dwarf has at least three of their physical needs met (Food, Alcohol, Cloths, and a bed) over a reasonable stretch of time, they occasionally have a job in a year.
• Unhappy: Dwarf has only two of their physical needs met (Food, Alcohol, Cloths, and a bed) over a reasonable stretch of time, they occasionally have a job in a year.
• Angry: Dwarf has only one of their physical needs met (Food, Alcohol, Cloths, and a bed) over a reasonable stretch of time, they don't have a job for a long period of time.
• Insane: The Dwarf was angry and experienced some type of trauma. This could include having none of their physical needs being met in a reasonable amount of time.

According to the research done in the Wiki, There are a total of 44 positive emotions 69 negative emotions, and 7 neutral emotions
There are 8 very positive emotions and 12 very negative emotions. the next level 15 positive to 12 negative and next level is 9 positive to 21 negative and finally 11 good emotions to 24 bad emotions

I understand this imbalance alone doesn't create a problem, but it does show a preference for negative emotions in the system and a lack of positive emotions to make up for the bad experiences. Add to this that several positive interactions are broken such they they do not occur and several negative interactions are broken such that they duplicate themselves and no wonder the system is busted.

There are no positive thoughts related to clothing, combat, weather, crafting, animal training, or mining.
of those most will result a guaranteed negative thought.

This will only complicate the Treason system Tarn is working on. If this isn't fixed you might as well rename the game Treason Fortress.

[treptoplax]

Long time lurker, registered to post on these threads...

Honestly, I feel like the problem with stress is the basic mechanic, not something to be fixed by twiddling weights (assuming I understand it, which I may not) - it just a counter that goes up and down based on experiences.  It can be managed now, at least for a while, but it's a huge hassle if it's not a primary focus or at least a mechanical reflex.  Dwarves with a constant supply of minor good experiences will become fantastically happy; those with on ongoing stream of minor bad ones will starve themselves to death or go on a violent rampage.  People aren't like that, and if anything I'd expect dwarves to be more phlegmatic, not less.   I'm inclined to say dwarves should each have a  'natural' innate level of happiness they tend to regress to in addition to the influence of any ongoing moodlets/stressors; I think just adding that would solve 90% of the current issues people have with stress.

[GoblinCookie]

There is a problem with stress? 

[ZM5]

There is a problem with stress? 

Have you not played the game since 44.10 or so? That's when most of these issues started.

[Putnam]

I understand this imbalance alone doesn't create a problem, but it does show a preference for negative emotions in the system and a lack of positive emotions to make up for the bad experiences.

It doesn't show much anything of the sort, since that would suggest that there's a uniform distribution of all emotions, which... I don't know, have you ever seen grim satisfaction? I have, once.

[Schmaven]

There is a problem with stress? 

It's not that a regular fort ever really is lost due to stress issues.  I think it's more that the current way the stress system exists, is making the game more unpleasant for players without there being a realistic way to deal with it in game and move on. 

Like with were-beast attacks: they can be difficult, but if you scroll through the combat logs and isolate the infected, you can essentially move past the incident and onto other matters.  With the stress system, it reduces the efficiency of all projects, and with a large fort of +100, has a very large time cost to address even partially. 

Being accustomed to how much easier everything was accomplished pre-stress, I often feel like my forts are progressing in slow motion.

My approach to the current stress system is to lock away those dwarves who have become harrowed / insane / berserk / stumble around obliviously.  Then clean up the room once the miasma has subsided, and welcome the new migrant wave to replenish the workforce.  As long as migrants often come, it's the simplest and least time consuming way to have a fort of happy productive dwarves.

I've never tried a callenge fort that has migrants disabled.  That seems like where the stress system hits the hardest.  But that is an egde case really.

[GoblinCookie]

There is a problem with stress? 

Have you not played the game since 44.10 or so? That's when most of these issues started.

Yes I have and I found no issues with stress.

Everybody spends all their time being deliriously happy about how great their dining hall is and how great their bedrooms are as well as how interesting their chair is.  Then there is alcohol on top of that; the occasional bad thing that happens does not counteract in any way the general barrage of good things.  Bad things happen occasionally, good things happen constantly; if bad things are happening constantly the problem is you the player and not the game. 

[wierd]

I understand this imbalance alone doesn't create a problem, but it does show a preference for negative emotions in the system and a lack of positive emotions to make up for the bad experiences.

It doesn't show much anything of the sort, since that would suggest that there's a uniform distribution of all emotions, which... I don't know, have you ever seen grim satisfaction? I have, once.

I have actually.  Isn't this essentially what schadenfreude is?  (specifically in the case of poetic justice, where somebody who has been a source of great distress to others, suffers the consequences of such behavior in a profound, and significant fashion?)

[Radircs]

A bit late to the party for a comment but I think I can add a few things. First I don't have a problem with stressed Dwarfs. After the changes I had like 2 or 3 Forts that go down thanks to it but after that no more were lost to stress.

But even if I have found solutions to this problem it's still shows a lot of wired interactions. I have to be really careful and set up a lot of things fast and with not much of freedom to change some things up. Yes different amount of Temples, Tavern layout is different etc. but overall it's the same things I do all time because it's the only that have proven to work.

In my opinion the stress system need to be split up. Currently, everything can become a memory and it's quite hard to remove one. You need got things in quantity not quality to really keep it under control and you have to micro minimize stress factors. It is a hard task to figure out but if you understand that you just need to shower you dwarfs with as many positive thoughts as possible its get a lot easier and way less real.

A lot of suggestions is to make Dwarfs a bit smarter in their need fulfillment. But I think we need to first fix how the system work. Currently, getting in the rain is the same effect as have a nice place or contact to your family.

My current suggestion for the stress system would be a 3-layer Split up. An Emotional layer, a Mind/Memory layer and the Character layer.
You could think about this with a permanent stress and a temporary stress.
Every thing they see, do or experience go first in the Emotional layer. It has a fast Impact on stress but is replaced fast as well. Strong emotional reaction can become memories.
Memory's and thoughts are something that a dwarf will have from time to time and have a similar stress change then the real thing would have. If he remembers something or encounter a similar situation he will strength the memory otherwise its slowly decay until the dwarf forget it.
If a memory is long enough in the mind of a dwarf it can start to effect the Character. Character should have 2 influences on the stress system. One is the resilient to stress this does't make stress slower to accumulate its more to determinant the break point of the dwarf. The other one is the factors how certain things impact the Dwarf. Value Family for example make every emotional or memory around this have a bigger impact on stress(positive and negative).

This would be my suggestion to change the system. Its more realistic than the current one in my opinion, it gives you a better response time to stress, less to worry about some once in the blue moon things and it gives a lot more balance levers than the current one what will later be useful I guess.

I know I could talk a lot about changing the system that is already in the game but I don't see a lot of potential to archive with this one the thing DF is all about. To be a good simulation of a fantasy world with a good simulation of characters.

[FantasticDorf]

Longish term player here @ThreeToe, since least before the tavern arc went in and the last few builds before 40. Things markedly changed in dwarf behaviour beyond the tavern Arc in general and it became a real slog with stress afterwards in 44.10. I've posted every manner of theory and practical demonstration but there are a four constant factors

Four particular points to mention.

• Locations are very attention intensive, and have changed dwarves to be less self sufficient and the old meeting zones to be redundant in all but the most basic capacity, bugs like this one where they will still do their activity even after being pulled out by force into a burrow are common, and trying to get meeting room specific reactions like making them interact with pets (nevermind other dwarves) is very very hard and needs redesigning your fortress a lot.

• Additional needs are player box ticking exercises, not motivated goals held by the dwarf. You build a library out of nessecity to fill the need rather than a dwarf scrambling to obtain and read by themselves, this frustrates the player with micro-management of each individual which isn't feasibly easy and also not very fun with the ui and controls. Some of these things should be outside of the players zone of control like dwarves holding private ownership of copies of books or least until the author of the original is dead and has stopped claiming it

• I remember vividly the parties dwarves used to hold, this event squirreled them all together into a common area, and absolutely cleared their schedules in which in the current state of the game you can work them to death without complaint, either by ethic or whatever, dwarves are made for working but the game doesn't have scope to have them doing that forever and inevitably dwarves need to relax, procreate and try to entertain the player socially.

• Dwarves are now incredibly inattentive for any matter besides spotting enemies in combat, they hardly acknowledge beautiful decoration unless they are standing right beside it, unless some bad/regressive code is there for checking adjacent tiles. In the same way there's a bug which means that dwarves need additional partners to strike up a conversation in NESW directions. Said dwarves could also be immobilized (some people suggested shooting their legs off with ballistae) to strike conversation with

Everything beside, taverns dont work, i never build inefficient 10x10 ones because they fit 200 dwarves packed into the squares and massive voids of space when using anything less than that amount of patrons. I've already offered suggestions like special code for spacing them out. Temples never require more than 1x3/1x5 on the logic that a small shrine fits 12-20 worshippers because they stand on the same tiles.

Libraries are the most succesuful becuase they dont have a floor activity and are just modified meeting area's with a activity to fufill within them if it is a bit repetitive because of possible dwarf code, which should ideally be the archetype like we have in the previous definition of statue garden modifiers to art, or meeting halls all being one big dining room.